Nearly all _Aurengzebe_ is composed in this brilliant snip-snap, where the ball of a fine sentiment, tossed from one character to another, comes back in a retort, to be returned in a repartee. Of dramatic art as Shakespeare or the Greeks understood it there is not a trace; the pivot of the action is the property, fitter for a fairy tale than a tragedy, possessed by Indamora, of compelling every one who sees her to fall in love with her. Neither pity nor terror can be excited on such terms; if Aristotle's criterion be sound, _Aurengzebe_ is no tragedy at all. If, however, we are content to regard it as a medley of fine things, a model of spirited declamation and sonorous versification, it claims high praise. Great must have been the intellectual strength which could thus thunder and dazzle through five acts of unabated energy: and the sentiments, considered merely as such, lose nothing of their effect from being placed in the mouths of puppets, and misplaced even there. Take, for instance, the most famous passage in the play, one of the finest in all Dryden: 'When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat; Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay; To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies worse, and while it says, we shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly runnings could not give.' This potent quintessence of the experience of age is ill assigned to Aurengzebe, a young prince at the outset of a splendid career; but the word remains while the lip is forgotten, and has taken its place among the treasures of English poetry. Among other claims to notice, _Aurengzebe_ is remarkable as one of the few English dramas in which a living foreign potentate is brought upon the stage, and, less exceptionally, for its entire perversion of the truth of history. The generous and filial part here ascribed to the unnatural and cold-blooded Aurengzebe was really performed by his unfortunate brother Dara. To have crowned Dara, however, would have involved an equal violation of historical truth, to have killed him a violation of what the dramatists of Dryden's day considered more important, poetical justice.